The free shipping rebate that quietly costs $25 a month

Check your card statement for a $25 charge you cannot place. Malwarebytes wrote up a service called ShipmentsFree on 25 September, and the pattern in the complaints is always the same: somebody spots a recurring charge, has no memory of signing up for anything, and cannot work out who to ring.

The offer itself is not illegal. ShipmentsFree says members can claim up to $100 a month back on shipping and return costs if they submit proof of what they paid. What people miss is that the membership is a $25 monthly auto-renewing subscription. It turns up as a pop-up mid-purchase, as a checkout add-on, in retailer promotions and inside apps, usually framed as a rebate you have already earned rather than a shop you are joining. The same branding runs across a cluster of sites including shipmentsfree.com, freeshpmts.com, shipmentsfreezone.com and myshipmentsfree.com.

The Better Business Bureau profile for shipmentsfree.com lists 529 complaints closed in the past three years, 179 of them about billing. Some people describe rebates being refused after a few claims, followed by cancellation and unanswered emails.

This is one of the oldest tricks in retail wearing new clothes. Anything offered to you at the moment you are already typing in a card number deserves a proper read, and a screenshot of the terms before you click. If a charge does appear, your card issuer is usually faster than the company's support inbox, and asking the company in writing for proof of how you enrolled tends to speed things along. It is worth a look at the browser too, since offers like this often arrive through a pop-up or an extension nobody meant to keep. Tendvane's safety check flags browser add-ons and bundled extras you never chose to install.